Help:trouble after getting message "Unable to Read CD"!

[Unregistered]

Hi
Been using/testing the Music Converter version 10.1 since August and the trial Plus Pack since 2 weeks ago(needed to change some tags). I have ripped over 200 cd's (still a lot to go, though), and I was very satisfied until a week ago when strange things started to happen. I was ripping a cd when I suddenly got this message:

CODEC decompression error for '\\CdRom\Track08.cda'
Unable to read CD, scratched disk?

I removed the cd, polished it, put it back in and continued to rip the remaining tracks. BUT, the process was SLOW and playing music while ripping was a new experience as the speed/beat of the track playing varied alot while ripping. The encoding was slower too, all down to X1 and max X8. It used to be up to X12-X14. And if that wasn't enough, suddenly my computer restarted in the middle of the ripping process! I tried alot of things, uninstalling the software, reinstalling etc, but to no help.

I thought, OK, maybe the CD-device is broken, and used it as an excuse to by a new DVD-Burner. And then we were back on track, ripping at even higher speed than before and playing music at the same time.

But today I was going to burn som CD's again, and the first CD started out fine, until the last track, when I got the same message as last week. I polished the cd and finished ripping the track. And then the same thing happens again:Dead slow ripping/encoding and playing music is no point as playback-speed while ripping varies too much. And using the DVD-burner device suddenly results in a restart of the computer.

Any idea what's causing this?

My computer is a P4 2,8GHZ with 1048 MB Ram and a (new) Plextor PX712A DVD-burner. When ripping, MusicConverter.exe uses about 50% of the processor-power, regardless.

[ChristinaS]

Hi
Been using/testing the Music Converter version 10.1 since August and the trial Plus Pack since 2 weeks ago(needed to change some tags). I have ripped over 200 cd's (still a lot to go, though), and I was very satisfied until a week ago when strange things started to happen. I was ripping a cd when I suddenly got this message:

CODEC decompression error for '\\CdRom\Track08.cda'
Unable to read CD, scratched disk?

I removed the cd, polished it, put it back in and continued to rip the remaining tracks. BUT, the process was SLOW and playing music while ripping was a new experience as the speed/beat of the track playing varied alot while ripping. The encoding was slower too, all down to X1 and max X8. It used to be up to X12-X14. And if that wasn't enough, suddenly my computer restarted in the middle of the ripping process! I tried alot of things, uninstalling the software, reinstalling etc, but to no help.

I thought, OK, maybe the CD-device is broken, and used it as an excuse to by a new DVD-Burner. And then we were back on track, ripping at even higher speed than before and playing music at the same time.

But today I was going to burn som CD's again, and the first CD started out fine, until the last track, when I got the same message as last week. I polished the cd and finished ripping the track. And then the same thing happens again:Dead slow ripping/encoding and playing music is no point as playback-speed while ripping varies too much. And using the DVD-burner device suddenly results in a restart of the computer.

Any idea what's causing this?

My computer is a P4 2,8GHZ with 1048 MB Ram and a (new) Plextor PX712A DVD-burner. When ripping, MusicConverter.exe uses about 50% of the processor-power, regardless.
I think you've run into som kind of protection on those cd's wheer one track cannot ber ripped in that manner. Remove the automatic detection of table of contents and try again. Or use dMC and select the bad track directly from WIndows Explorer to convert.

[Unregistered]

Hi ChristinaS, thanks for the quick response

Table of Contents Detection isn't enabled, never has been.
And besides, i did get to rip the tracks after i cleaned the cd's, only that it took a lot longer. Example: a spesific cd (playing time ca 30 mins) took about 2 min and 15 to rip before this happened, now the same cd takes bout 3 min and 40 seconds to rip. And this cd does not have any copy protection as it is a band's demo-recording. Having cd's of somtimes 70-80 min, makes ripping time considerably longer than before. And I can't even play music while doing it...

The dvd-player seem to work slower after this incident, burning 2GB took about eleven minutes, when set to burn at X8. This should normally take about 4 minutes.

It almost seems to me that ripping(or failed ripping) does something to the player, does that make any sense at all? I noticed when ripping the track that ultimateliy failed, it took a long time before it "timed out", the progressbar stopped at 92% and stayed there for some minutes before it gave the error-message.

Roger, from Norway

[Spoon]

Make sure that the Priority option on the dmc converting page is 'Normal'.

[Unregistered]

It is set to Normal.

[Spoon]

Try ripping to 'Test Conversion' and make sure no DSP effects are running (if you have the power pack).

[Unregistered]

Try ripping to 'Test Conversion' and make sure no DSP effects are running (if you have the power pack).

When doing this, the encoding is very fast, up to X17, the ripping from 18-20something.

[Spoon]

Then it is the encoding that is slow (for what ever reason, perhaps something else is running at 100% cpu usage). Try this rip 1 track to a wave file then convert to format of choice (right click >> convert to), post your times please.

[Unregistered]

Then it is the encoding that is slow (for what ever reason, perhaps something else is running at 100% cpu usage). Try this rip 1 track to a wave file then convert to format of choice (right click >> convert to), post your times please.

OK, did the following tests with my "reference cd" with total running time : ca 30 min.

Rip2Wav:
Ripping: avg X17
Encoding: avg X15
Tot.time: 1.52

Wav2MP3(Lame) 192kbs:
Encoding: Changing between X14 and X15
Tot.time:1.56

Rip2MP3(Lame) 192 kbs:
Rip:between X16 and X18
Encoding: beginning of songs: X1 at the end of songs: max X7
Tot.time: 3.40

Rip2Wav:
Rip: avg X17
Encoding:X15
Tot.Time: 1.52

Rip2MP3(Lame) 192kbs
Rip: X17-X18
Encoding:X1.6 X3.3 X4 X 6 X7 Never more than X7
Tot.Time:3.43

The strange thing here is that before this started to happen, I ripped and converted this cd to MP3 in 2.15. What's the logic here? Ripping and converting to Wav works fast, Converting from wav to MP3 works fast, but ripping and converting to MP3 is slow.

CPU-usage in both ripping-operations are +- 50%

[Spoon]

The CD Ripper has its own mp3 lame settings, note not all mp3 settings are the same speed, ie Alt Preset Standard is slower than cbr 192Kbps.

[Unregistered]

The CD Ripper has its own mp3 lame settings, note not all mp3 settings are the same speed, ie Alt Preset Standard is slower than cbr 192Kbps.

Very well, but ripping the same cd to MP3(Lame) at 192kbps with my portable PC takes only 2min 40 seconds with encoding speed up to X14 (avg X12), and on my stationary PC (with better HW-spec), the same process (with the same cd) now takes 3 min and 40 seconds, but before I got this "Unable to read"-message, it took 2 min and 15 seconds. Something has happened to my stationary PC after I got this "Unable to read"-message, I just wonder if it is software- or hardwarerelated.

[Unregistered]

The problem is solved! I started getting the same problem on my portable computer as well, so I started to compare event-logs and stuff. After doing a little internet-searching I found out that the problem was the DVD-ROM's Transfermode had been changed from DMA to PIO(which is slower and therefore safer) because of trouble reading the CD.

This solved it:

http://sniptools.com/vault/getting-back-to-dma-mode-in-windows-xp.htm

What I still haven't found out is how to keep it in DMA-mode if I would have problems with reading a CD again (which is likely to happen).

Does anyone know how to do that, if possible at all?